


Cooling (Die Songficenlied Part 2)

by se_parsons



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:00:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27537214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/se_parsons/pseuds/se_parsons
Summary: ORIGINALLY POSTED 12 Nov 1998SPOILER WARNING: Revelations, 2Shy, Emily, the Cancer arc, time-frame Season Five  before All Souls  (You probably should have read my first story in this evil songfic series "Just Good Friends" before you read this.)RATING: NC-17CLASSIFICATION: Story, Mulder/Scully, UST, A and H if you're evil and sarcastic.KEYWORDS:SUMMARY: This was written for those who requested a continuation of Just Good Friends, my obscure songfic, which I'm reposting with this. Watch out for this one.  It's Scully POV with talk about religion, not for children! And, of course, hot monkey lovin'!If you want to hear the song by Tori Amos that it's based on, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkogERxDWDw
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	Cooling (Die Songficenlied Part 2)

So Mulder was acting weird. So what? Like it was anything new.

Scully tried to be really disinterested as he snuck something like the ninetieth glance her way when he thought she wasn't looking. Just like he'd been doing every day since her aborted date with Rob and- what had happened afterward.

Scully had put it out of her mind.

Scully didn't think about it at all.

Scully didn't even remember it, except for every time she caught him looking at her like that. About ninety times a day.

It was disturbing.

It was obsessive.

It was irritating.

It was Mulder, and she shouldn't be surprised.

But she was.

She thought they'd had an agreement. She thought they'd understood one another afterward. After they'd talked about it. After they'd both said those awful things to one another. Those true things.

But apparently Mulder hadn't understood what she'd meant. He hadn't agreed to the same things she had.

Because things weren't just the same as they had always been. Things weren't normal. And Scully was beginning to get the feeling that they never would be again. That maybe the event really hadn't been the anticlimax she'd imagined it was. Maybe things weren't really just the same horizontal. Maybe they weren't screwed up in the same way.

Maybe they were screwed up differently.

It wasn't enough to send her screaming up to Skinner's office crying for a transfer. It wasn't enough to make her want to shoot Mulder again. It wasn't enough to make her even really angry. But it was irritating. Like sand in your shoe or an itch under your nylons in a place where it was unladylike to scratch. 

She could feel his eyes on her as she worked at her laptop on the drafting table of his cluttered office. And, as usual, she hadn't the slightest clue what was going on behind them. But from the pained look he'd been wearing now for nearly two months, she imagined they were rather unpleasant.

Did he still feel guilty?

She didn't know how he could. She'd assured him over and over that she didn't blame him, that she'd been as responsible for what had happened as he was. Probably more, if she really admitted things to herself.

Ok, definitely more.

But she hadn't had any intention of doing what she did when she'd gone there. She'd just wanted to cry a little bit to someone sympathetic. Someone who understood a little but wasn't her mother.

You just couldn't go to your mother and tell her that you'd failed to make it with a good-looking guy from forensics. At least Scully couldn't. Her mother knew better, but Scully didn't want to do anything to mess up the white lace wedding with her name on it that

Maggie had always had somewhere in the back of her head. At least not until she really had to.

But at the rate things were going, Maggie would have to give it up sooner or later. Just like Scully would, herself, if she had the courage to look at that, too. She was at the age now where things like that were more humiliating than beautiful. A few words in front of a priest should suffice for a woman of her age and relative sexual purity.

Half her friends from college were on their second babies or second husbands by now. And what did she have?

No ova, no husband, no house in the suburbs, no Volvo station wagon, no dog, a one-bedroom apartment that she lived in alone, a bed that had had a man in it the last time two years ago and he had been drugged to the gills and psychotic at the time. Not to mention totally uninterested in her.

And he was still totally uninterested in her, too. Despite what it had felt like at the time. Despite the way he'd touched her that night. It had just been sex. It had been a while for both of them, and she'd already been worn down by Rob-

Ok, so she hadn't been worn down by Rob. She had hardly been able to stand his hands on her. She'd sat there like a statue letting him paw on her because she didn't want the bastards to win. Because Mulder had been right about that. Because she had to go out and get laid for the good of the X-Files. To prove they weren't winning. Or something.

But she hadn't felt like she was winning. Not when Rob picked her up. Not when he'd taken hold of her elbow instead of placing his hand in the middle of her back like he was supposed to and had escorted her to the car. Not when he'd turned on that cheesy "lite jazz" station on the car radio that sounded like the soundtracks to the horrid soft-core shows like "Red Shoe Diaries" on Blowtime. And most certainly not when they'd run into Mulder on the street in front of the restaurant, wearing his leather jacket and a look of emptiness on his face that Scully had found frightening.

And then he'd made that crack about the high-powered rifle and the "angry loner". Like he thought that's what she thought. He knew she knew better. Didn't he?

But the most irritating thing wasn't that he didn't understand her.

He never had. He'd never had the slightest clue even if she knew he would search both heaven and hell for her if anything ever happened to her. He wouldn't know what he was looking for.

Maybe that had been Orpheus' problem.

He'd gone down to Hades looking for Eurydice, and had found something that looked like what he was looking for. Something that looked like what he thought of her. Then, when he'd gotten close to the surface, he'd realized he might be wrong and had looked back and realized he really had blown it. That the person following him wasn't the one he'd been looking for at all - because he hadn't really known who she was. Just what he thought she was.

Mulder didn't know her. And Scully had the sneaking suspicion that if he really did, if he could see what she really was - he wouldn't want to.

Because all the good things that had been there once - all the things that had made Dana Scully a person Dana Scully could be proud of - were gone. Ok, so maybe not all, but at least all of the ones that could have made her understand Mulder were gone. She was still honest. She liked to think she was brave. She was loyal and trustworthy and dependable. And she still wanted to be good. But she couldn't really BE good anymore. Not as she understood it. Because she couldn't forgive. She couldn't be compassionate. She couldn't remember what either of those things felt like or how to do them. 

She could remember justice, and fairness and honor, and all of the things that had the fine cold edge of decision about them. But caring? Love? Needing something and desiring it so much it became a physical pain, those she could not remember. She knew they existed, because she saw them in others. She saw them in Mulder. But she couldn't remember what they were like. Or if she'd ever felt them for herself, or if they'd only been explained to her.

And now here was Mulder, taxing her patience and filling her thoughts with his messy warmth. When she needed to be level-headed, fair, patient and dispassionate, because Skinner had assigned her a little teaching job on the side. A new pathologist straight from Quantico who needed to be trained to look for the unusual because she was to be assigned to VCS. And Scully was the only active agent who had seen all of the weird things she had seen. And Skinner knew she was the best woman for the job. And because he'd told her they had so much in common.

How little he knew.

How little Skinner knew her, either. Both Skinner and Mulder, and they saw her every day. Neither knew how blighted, how cold, how dead she was now. They still reacted to her like she was-. Well, like she was Peggy.

Sue O'Connor, the tall, lanky Irish-American forensic pathologist from Texas; yes, she was named for the song by Buddy Holly; no, she wasn't what you'd think.

Her love of medicine had sprung out of her religion and a desire to serve others. At first, she'd thought to be a nun, but when her talent for healing was recognized she'd gone to college for that instead.

And when a school friend had been raped and murdered at a fraternity party that had gotten out of hand, and no one was ever punished, Peggy Sue O'Connor had recognized in herself a passion for justice as great as her passion to help others. So she had gone to the FBI. Not as Scully had, to distinguish herself and right wrongs, but as Mulder had, to find the truth and bring it to those who were suffering under doubt. She wanted to find the lost ones and comfort those who were left behind. Scully had never thought to comfort them. Or if she had, she'd forgotten how.

So Skinner had set the blind to lead the sighted while the visionary watched. It was so comical Scully would have laughed if she'd still remembered what it felt like.

It was five o'clock on Wednesday.

She couldn't stand Mulder's staring anymore.

"I'm going home," Scully said, not looking directly at him. She didn't want to see the expression he wore. "I'll see you tomorrow, but you know tomorrow is Peggy's first day, so I'll be taking her through some things at the Lab as well."

"Yeah, I know Scully," Mulder said, with a try at his lopsided grin. "I'll try to restrain myself from singing her praises if she does well."

"I'm sure she'd heard it a zillion times," Scully said. "Don't be too hard on her, Mulder. It's her first day, remember?"

"I was easy on you your first day, wasn't I?" he said mischievously.

"Of course," Scully said easily. "I think flying to Oregon with an openly hostile partner who mocks you unceasingly, poking around a cemetery filled with rotted apes, and losing nine minutes of your life make a perfectly reasonable first day on the job for anyone."

Mulder shut his mouth with a snap and looked hurt.

Scully didn't look at him anymore, not even from the corner of her eye. She walked out the door. Maybe he'd get the idea someday. That he couldn't touch her anymore. That there was nothing left there to be touched. That the final part of her that felt had frozen solid and fallen off a while past - next to a small coffin filled with sand.

Maybe I didn't like to hear  
But I still can't believe Speed Racer is dead  
So then I thought I'd make some plans  
But Fire thought she'd really rather be Water instead  


Mulder had never seen her before.

And Scully didn't know why she hadn't noticed, even while she was comparing them to one another. But Peggy was exactly his type. Tall, dark-haired, beautiful, with a kind of natural poise and grace that Scully had always associated with tall women. Something she'd noticed while stumping along on her stunted legs and looking up at them silhouetted against the clouds.

He'd come upon them elbow-deep in the body cavity of one Mr. Eldon Meier of Holland, Michigan, who had died in California under rather mysterious circumstances. Not the characteristically marked victim of a serial murderer, but in a manner of sufficient importance and mystery to require a once-over by Federal investigators. It was a good way for Scully to see how Peggy worked, and to see what she noticed.

It was an odd way for Mulder to fall in love. But he did it anyway. Scully had nearly heard the violins start playing, herself.

And Peggy had smiled at him. A smile that lit her whole face with kindness, that made her green eyes shine like summer sunlight through the trees, that sent out so much warmth that even Scully felt the chill inside her lessen - even if only for the duration of that smile.

"Peggy O'Connor, this is my partner, Agent Mulder," Scully said, cranking the rib spreader a bit to give herself a clearer view of Mr. Meier's seemingly perfect innards.

"Agent Mulder," Peggy said, her Texas drawl adding a softness to her voice that Scully envied. "I've heard so much about you."

"Please forget all of it," Mulder replied, taking a glance at Meier's chart.

"Even the part about your being brilliant?" Peggy shyly returned her attention to Mr. Meier's spleen.

"Well, maybe not that part," Mulder said, sounding inordinately pleased with himself. Scully didn't look at him; she kept her attention on the man on the table rather than the one on the other side of the room.

"O'Connor, would you mind shining that light a little bit over here?" Scully asked, and Peggy hastened to comply, blushing slightly, ashamed that she hadn't noticed she was in Scully's light.

The blush touching her cheeks made her even more beautiful, of course. And the length of curling dark hair that escaped from the bun at the back of her head to straggle down the side of her face didn't make her look messy but rather untamed and mysterious. Like Cathy on the moors.

The building's temperature control system was on the fritz again, and Scully could feel her own hair sticking to the sweat on the side of her face, held to her head by her surgical mask. She knew she looked a fright, while Peggy merely seemed dewy. The lushness of her expansive soul evident in her every look, every movement.

"Well," Scully said after checking the pancreas. "That's that. What would you say was the cause of death Dr. O'Connor."

"Undetermined, Dr. Scully," Peggy said hesitantly, looking fearfully at her. "We won't be able to tell until the tox screens come back, if then. This man is apparently absolutely healthy."

"Except for the cholesterol in his arteries, I'd have to agree," Scully said, reaching up to snap off the light above the body, but discovering she was too short. Someone had raised it since the last time she'd used this autopsy bay. It was about three inches out of her reach. She contemplated jumping, refusing to be stymied by something so unutterably stupid, but she was spared the indignity by Mulder's reaching up and shutting it off for her.

He'd moved very close to her to do it, and she could feel the heat radiating from his body, where he stood behind her. It was irritating. She was hot enough already. And he apparently had no intention of moving away any time soon because he started chatting pleasantly with Peggy, trapping Scully up against the side of the table with no graceful way to make an exit.

"So, Agent O'Connor, you're going to be assigned to the VCS?" Mulder said.

"Yes, I'm very excited," Peggy beamed. Scully looked down at the body and began tidying up. "I think I'll be able to do a lot of good there, really make a difference."

"It's awfully hard work," Mulder said thoughtfully. "And I don't just mean physically because of the hours."

"I know, I've been preparing myself, mentally and spiritually as much as I can," Peggy said seriously. "I've been seeing the departmental therapist and praying a great deal. I know that there's a reason I was chosen for this work. That there's something I'm supposed to do, some contribution that I can make, that only I can make. I'm trying to be as ready as I can, so I know when I see it.

"Do you have any advice for me Agent Mulder? I know that you were in VCS before you began working with Agent Scully. People say you were the best profiler they ever had."

"I don't know about that," Mulder said modestly, though you could tell he was pleased. And he'd earned the right to be pleased, too, with sweat, and toil, and his heart's blood, if anyone was counting.

"But I can sometimes put myself in the head of someone who is committing a crime. Discover why they're committing it, and then I can figure out how to catch them. But it's hard. It's the worst thing I've ever had to do. It's nothing I'd choose to do if it wasn't necessary."

"Why do you think that you can do it when other people can't?" Peggy asked him, helping Scully clean up at the same time. "It can't just be psychology or everyone who took that would be able to do it."

"Maybe it's because I'm open to extreme possibilities," Mulder smiled at the in-joke Peggy had no way of getting.

"You mean like yours and Agent Scully's work on the X-files," Peggy nodded, still just as serious. "Is it true that you actually saw saints and angels, Agent Scully?"

"Hmm, what?" Scully asked, surprised she'd been addressed at all. Mulder had seemed to have the conversation all wrapped up.

"Funny, people usually ask us if we've seen little, green men," Mulder quipped. Scully could feel the boyishly endearing look on his face, even through the back of her head.

"Have you, Agent Scully?" Peggy asked, looking pointedly at the chain of Scully's cross.

"I can't say for certain. I have no definitive proof other than a man whose body didn't decay normally, and I've seen a few of those," Scully answered. "Maybe I just saw what I wanted to see. At least, that's what Mulder thinks."

"I never said that," Mulder said, sounding somewhat hurt.

"You don't believe in God, Mulder," Scully said, beginning the suture to close up Mr. Meier. "So if I saw someone blessed by God, it had to be wish-fulfillment, right?"

"I never said that, either, Scully," Mulder chastened her. "I said that -"

"Semantics, Mulder," Scully argued. "Just be honest and admit that you believe religion to be ridiculous superstition. You have a poster on your wall that says, "I want to believe", but you think that those of us who do are fools - benighted, medieval peasants cowering at our own shadows. That when I go to Mass and to Confession all I'm doing is applying psychological salve to my own conscience, rather than communing with something greater than myself. Or if I am communing with something greater, it's merely the collective Jungian unconscious, channeled through the energy of the group. You practically accused me of being hysterical the times I saw the hand of God at work in the world. And while I have my own doubts as to what I've seen, as to my own worthiness to witness such a thing, I don't doubt in the existence of God or his plan. Because if I did, then I wouldn't be able to imagine that what's happened - all that's happened to us means something. And if it doesn't mean something, then what has all of it been for?"

Mulder was silent for a long moment. Then he stepped away from Scully.

"Does that answer your question, Agent O'Connor?" he asked lightly.

"I wish.." O'Connor began, and then summoned up the courage to proceed. "I wish I had your faith, Agent Scully. I wish I could have seen the things that you've seen. To be so blessed. I feel so honored that Deputy Director Skinner has assigned me to work with you. It's like-. It's like meeting Sir Galahad or Christine de Pisan."

"Is that what you think?" Scully asked, stopping her sewing for a minute to look at the beatifically shining face of Peggy Sue O'Connor.

"That I've been blessed? Let me tell you one thing, Agent O'Connor, I would give anything, everything, not to have seen the things I've seen. It's more than anyone should have to know. It's horrible. More horrible than if it was the Devil, himself. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. And certainly not on you."

"Oh, Agent Scully, I'm so sorry," Peggy said, beautiful leaf-green eyes filling with crystalline tears. "I hadn't thought how it must feel. That it would be painful, even though that's what they all said \- Paul, on the road to Damascus, all the Saints who've suffered. I don't know why I was so stupid. Please forgive me."

"Just stop fooling yourself, O'Connor," Scully said, pressing her lips together to keep herself from screaming at the poor deluded girl. 

"Don't go thinking I'm blessed or something I'm not. If anything, it's Mulder that attracts Divine intervention. I'd never have seen any of it if it hadn't been for the X-Files. I'm nothing special.

Nothing different than anyone else. It's just that I believe, and so that's how I explain it. It's the only difference between Mulder and me. How we explain it."

"I'm sorry," Peggy said, and actually hung her head.

Scully tied off her row of stitches.

"I'll see you tomorrow when the tox screens come back to go over them," Scully told her, and left the room to go scrub up.

All the same St. Scully claptrap. When would the boys at Quantico get over pulling the wool over the eyes of the new young agents? And O'Connor was so vulnerable that way. Maybe Mulder would be able to teach her to grow a thicker skin in that respect. She'd have to, with the kinds of people she would encounter working with VCS. Both the killers they hunted and the agents themselves.

How could the girl possibly delude herself that Scully had been chosen by God for something?

If she'd been chosen at all, it was to be punished. For what, Scully wasn't really sure. Maybe for what she'd done in another life, if Mulder's experience in Tennessee was to be believed. Maybe she'd always been bad, cold, heartless like she was now. And this life was just God's way of showing her how terrible that was. How much she hurt people by her lack of empathy, her inability to forgive.

Maybe that's what Peggy Sue O'Connor was there to tell her.

Maybe by pointing out the ridiculousness of those who believed her to be good, by flinging it in Scale's face, the Lord was letting her know that he wasn't fooled. That he knew what she really was and was making her pay for her sins.

It was almost heartening in a way. That someone else knew and understood just what an awful person she was. What a sinner. What a hateful, twisted, evil, cold-hearted bitch Dana Scully really was. And that he was making her pay.

That there really was justice in the universe.

And Peggy got a message for me  
From Jesus  
And I've heard every word  
That you have said  
And I know I have been  
Driven like the snow

Scully let Peggy go over the tox screens for the seventh or eighth time. They were just as inconclusive as when Scully had gone over them herself. But she knew the younger agent had to feel she'd been thorough. And Scully didn't want to do anything to discourage anyone from being thorough.

She was rather disappointed that there wasn't something clear there, something that her greater experience would allow her to reveal to the younger pathologist. Peggy was good, and Scully wished she had something to share with her, as Skinner had hoped.

"I know you said you haven't seen anything like this before, Agent Scully," Peggy said as she looked at the third page for the seventh time. "But I know that Agent Mulder has a photographic memory. Maybe we should ask him if he sees anything."

"Mulder may be "brilliant" Peggy, and he may have perfect recall, but he doesn't know how to read a tox screen in the first place. It's simply not his business. He leaves that end of it to me, and then listens to my report and then factors it in to what else we know of whatever case we're working on. That's where it usually gets a little weird."

"I think that's wonderful," Peggy smiled her sunny smile at Scully, the openness of her warm heart evident in the glow of her face. "It's so perfect."

"What? Weirdness?" Scully asked, shuffling through the pages of the screen again herself.

"No," Peggy said. "The way you are together. Like those salt and pepper shakers that everybody's grandmas have up on a shelf somewhere in their house. The ones that are little boys and girls, or little girl cows and little boy cows, or little dogs or whatever. They're completely different when you look at them, but they fit together perfectly and fulfill an important purpose. That's what the two of you are like - an apparently mismatched set, but one is no good without the other. I'm really sorry to be here taking you away from it."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Peggy," Scully said, with a shake of her head. "Mulder and I aren't like that. We work together. We respect one another, that's true. But we aren't a set, not by any stretch of the imagination."

"You know they said that everyone could see it but you, but I didn't believe them," Peggy shook her head.

"Who said?"

"Everybody," Peggy told her, shyly. "As soon as they heard I'd be working with you, they told me to watch out because neither of you would let anybody else in. That you were awful to any outsider who tried to help you."

"That's not true, Peggy," Scully said. "We used to work with Agent Pendrell a lot before he died."

"And Agent Mulder was always mean to him, that's what they told me," Peggy said nodding.

"Mulder wasn't mean to him," Scully said softly, remembering how he used to subtlely mock the younger agent and his worshipful attitude toward herself. "He's just got a sarcastic wit, that's all."

"Well I don't see it," Peggy agreed. "I think that it's true that the two of you are special together, but that's what it is. It's not that you're trying to exclude other people, it's just that no one understands you as well. You've both been so nice to me. So tolerant of my ignorance. I couldn't have asked for anyone better to help me."

"Yes you could have," Scully told her, looking at the screen again.

It was still nonsense as far as she was concerned. There was absolutely no reason the man should be dead according to the blood work, the endocrine levels, everything.

She was still staring blankly at the page when Mulder walked in.

Scully could tell it was him immediately by the sound of the footfalls on the tiles. He was sauntering. Obviously out to impress the very impressionable Peggy Sue O'Connor. And she knew he was wearing the gray suit today, the expensive suit, the one he usually saved for review board meetings or appearing in front of Congress.

Mulder owned a lot of gray suits, actually, a result of his colorblindness she supposed, seeing he couldn't trust himself that something he selected wasn't maroon or forest green. They all looked equally gray to him.

Endlessly seeing things in shades of gray.

It explained a lot.

"So what did our buddy, Eldon die of, Scully?" he asked casually, stepping up right behind her to read over her shoulder. He knew she hated that. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck, all clammy and warm. She knew that if she didn't watch it, he'd take the report right out of her hands even though he couldn't read the results anyway. He had control issues.

"I don't know Mulder, according to this report, he should still be alive," Scully told him. "There's nothing there that shouldn't be."

"Well what about something that should be there that isn't?" he asked. "Like when Virgil Incanto sucked the fat out of all those women?"

"But it was obvious that something had been done to them, then, Mulder," Scully said. He was really so ridiculous sometimes. "There's not a mark on this man, no wounds, no burns, not even a pinprick."

"My first thought was that it was electrocution, but there's nothing to indicate that, not the slightest burn or the least tissue damage," Peggy agreed.

"It was evident that it was some kind of a coronary event," Scully said. "His heart stopped beating, but as to the mechanism that caused that-. It's like all the cases of karoshi in Japan, there's nothing there that can point toward a cause."

"You think he worked himself to death, Scully?" Mulder asked. "He was on vacation, wasn't he?"

"Yes, and no one dropped a toaster into the Pacific Ocean, either, Mulder," she told him.

"But Agent Mulder was right the first time," Peggy said thoughtfully. "It isn't something that's there, it's something that isn't there."

"What do you mean?" Scully asked, hurrying over to look at the pages Peggy held.

"This man has absolutely no potassium in his body. None anywhere."

"A Potassium-sucking Vampire?" Mulder said doubtfully.

"I am so stupid!" Scully growled, as she looked at the man's medical history again. "It was the medication. They medicated this poor man to death and I almost missed it!"

"What are you talking about, Scully?" Mulder asked.

"I'm talking about the fact that these medications, interacting with each other, deplete the body of Potassium, which we all need to live. His pharmacist or his doctor malpracticed on him. I didn't notice it because all of the medication I detected in his body was supposed to be there. It was expected and there it was. I didn't even think of looking to see if they could be deadly in combination. I was just looking for a wound or poison or some active cause," she said angrily.

"Thank God Peggy was here, or his poor family would never have known."

"And his doctors wouldn't be facing hefty malpractice legislation," Mulder added.

"They deserve it for this," Scully hissed. "They're supposed to save lives, aren't they? Peggy, this is your find. You write up the report for Skinner. You're absolutely ready for VCS, and that's what I'm planning to tell him."

"Are you sure, Agent Scully?" Peggy was very wide-eyed and looked rather frightened.

"Mulder can help you with the paperwork if that's what you're worried about. But there's no question about your forensic expertise. I wonder that they assigned you to me, seeing you found what I missed. You're obviously more qualified to be here than I am," Scully said.

"I'm going to call the agents in charge and have them notify Mr. Meier's family."

She walked out of the room quickly, leaving Mulder with his new partner. Or at least she'd be his new partner soon. And that wasn't such a bad thing. She was obviously off her game, washed up. Couldn't see a simple thing like the lack of a vital nutrient. Scully was pathetic.

By the time she'd scrubbed, gotten herself cleaned up, and made her phone calls it was time to go home. She went back to the office for her purse and laptop and was relieved to find that Mulder wasn't there. His computer was shut down; his trenchcoat was gone from the coatrack. He'd gone home.

Or maybe to the pool for a swim. He'd taken to doing that again, she'd gathered. Not because he'd told her about it, but because of all the admiring Speedo comments she'd been hearing in the Ladies' restrooms lately.

Scully had actually never seen Mulder in a swimsuit, herself. It was kind of odd when she really thought about it, considering all of the hotels she'd stayed in with him, many of which had had pools. She couldn't recall that he'd ever seen her in a swimsuit, either. Not that that was much to see.

But, of course, they had both seen each other naked, so she supposed a swimsuit, Speedo or no, wouldn't be much of a thrill, really. Kind of anticlimactic. Like sex had been.

She idly wondered what all those restroom gossips would think about that. All the "oh-yeah-Mulder-is-really-hot-I-can-see-why-they-call-him-Fox-what-a-great-ass-and-those-shoulders" idiots who lusted and commented and ogled would do when faced with the real thing all mushy and needy and wanting reassurance the whole time he was fucking you until you couldn't remember your own name. But then it was over, and you did remember it, and he was still a great, big doofus with puppy eyes and a vaguely goofy-looking mouth who constantly dropped things and broke things and climbed all over your life until there wasn't really anything left there that was yours any more.

Scully wondered how much they'd like his ass and those shoulders then.

Scully went out the door to find that it was nearly pitch black and pouring down rain. What a day to take the bus to work. And to forget an umbrella. But then, Mulder had their departmental car. Something about needing to go over to see the Gunmen and review some new surveillance equipment.

Scully wondered why he bothered. She knew what day of the month the new porn tapes came in the mail by this time. He and Frohike were having a little film-fest. And what did she care?

Although it always vaguely bothered her to think of them watching porn together. With big bowls of buttered popcorn and the lights turned out. It was always dark over at the Gunmen's place, wasn't it? 

No, Scully really didn't want to go there. She really didn't.

She looked around and found an abandoned newspaper someone had thrown in the doorway. Making sure it wasn't containing something disgusting, she spread it out and held it up over her head. It should help a little, anyway, on her way to the bus stop.

She opened the door to discover that it was not only wet out, it was cold, and so she hurried as much as her heels would allow, thankful she'd worn the plain leather pumps and not the suede that morning, even though the suede looked great with her camel-colored pantsuit.

She ignored the car that pulled up beside her at the curb, after she realized it wasn't going to splash her.

"Scully! Scully, get in!"

It was Mulder. In the car. Not wearing a swimsuit. Not that she'd expected him to be, of course.

"Aren't you going to see the Gunmen tonight?" she asked.

"Yeah, but I can take you home first. It's pouring," he said, unlocking the doors with the electric control. "Get in."

"But Georgetown is the opposite direction," Scully told him.

"Frohike can wait," Mulder said. "You're getting soaked, Scully. And it's freezing out."

Scully hesitated. She really didn't want to be trapped in a car with Mulder right now. But it would be at least half an hour until the next bus in her direction. And she was very wet already. Almost to her knees, despite the length of her trenchcoat. And it was freezing, and she was chilled right to the bone, after the sauna that had been the pathology lab.

She hurried to the passenger door of the car and got in, dumping the newspaper in the gutter as she did so.

"God, Scully, you're wet," Mulder said.

"Brilliant observation," she replied, dripping onto the upholstery. Her partner reached out and grabbed her left hand in his right.

"And you're freezing, too," he continued like he hadn't heard her smart remark.

Scully hated it when he did that. She snatched her hand back out of his grip.

Mulder adjusted the heater until it was blaring out at her and causing the windows to steam up from the wetness of her clothes.

"Can you turn that down, Mulder?" she asked, shielding herself from the blowing somewhat with her admittedly frozen hands.

"Gotta love the heating system in Fords," he said, turning down the fan but not the heat. "Opens a portal straight to the bowels of hell. There's a phenomenon your friend Peggy might be interested in."

"Sounded a lot more like your friend Peggy, to me," Scully told him, in what she thought was a very light tone. "She didn't call me brilliant."

"No, she just wanted you to share some of your holy insight with the rest of us mortals," Mulder smiled. "But don't you think you were a little hard on her today while you were being hard on yourself?"

"What are you talking about, Mulder?" She asked.

"Leaving here alone there to fill out that report for Skinner, not really sure how it all had happened in the first place," Mulder explained.

"She had you to help her. We all know how great you are at paperwork," Scully smiled. A few years ago the comment would have been part of their teasing game, now it was mostly a bitter observation with the cutting edge of sarcastic truth.

"It was nasty, Scully," Mulder told her. "Just because she caught something you missed. Something you would have caught later."

"I wouldn't have caught it, Mulder," Scully said, folding her freezing hands in her lap.

"You caught the Incanto thing," Mulder said.

"An unmarked body with nothing wrong with it is totally different than a slimy puddle of goo. Slimy puddles of goo are obvious; this wasn't, so I didn't get it. End of story," Scully replied.

"What is the matter with you lately?" he asked. "Why are you being so hard on yourself? You would have caught it. You're a brilliant pathologist. You catch things other people can't even imagine, Scully. Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?" Scully said. "Admitting the truth? That I screwed up, Mulder, that I would have missed it and let those people go on wondering what had killed their husband, their father, their friend.

"I joined the FBI to help find answers, Mulder. If I can't find the simple ones any more, then what good am I? I don't belong here.

"If you want to couch it in the religious terms our friend Peggy likes to use, maybe God is trying to tell me something by bringing her into my life right now. Maybe he's trying to gently show me that I'm past it. Before I make some crucial error and get someone killed. Maybe it's a sign."

"Yeah, and I'm Mr. Spock from the planet Vulcan," Mulder replied. "Do you hear yourself, Scully? Is this what going back to church has done for you? I thought they were going to help you come to grips about the things that have been happening in your life. I thought your faith was supposed to strengthen you, not tear you down. What the hell are Father McCue and all the rest of his saints doing to your head?"

"I don't know why all of this has to come back to my faith, Mulder," she told him. "I know you don't agree with it. I thought we'd come to an understanding about that. It's something you're going to have to get over eventually. I don't find it incompatible with science, why should you? Why should it even matter to you at all? You've already made up your mind."

"It matters because of what I see it doing to you, Scully," he told her, gripping the wheel tightly and looking ahead at the traffic, not at her. "Every day I watch you suffering. Every day you pretend you're not. Your religion tells you that suffering is noble, that it brings you closer to God, well, that's bullshit. Suffering is suffering and there's no reason for anyone to do it needlessly.

"People always talk about how Spooky Mulder is off on some Crusade, but the fact is I'm not stupid enough to suffer needlessly..."

"Excuse me, pot, you're black," Scully interrupted. "You, Mulder, are a suffering junkie. I think that if you spent a single minute not feeling guilty about something, you'd fall down dead because you wouldn't know what to do with yourself. If you are ever happy for three consecutive seconds I am certain it will herald the Apocalypse. So don't go telling me you don't think suffering is noble. You wouldn't do so much of it if you didn't see some appeal.

"So my religion says it's saintly and reminds us of our mortality and our sinful natures, how do you justify it to yourself? People may make the "Saint Scully" cracks about me, but you really think you ARE Jesus. That you're going to save the world from aliens, Mulder, by sacrificing your own happiness for the good of mankind and don't tell me that you don't.

"Of course I'm not helping you any by encouraging you in this delusion, but the fact is that if there are aliens doing the things we know are happening, or even if they're only men, it is absolutely necessary that someone try to stop them. It just so happens that in this case, we're the only people who know enough about it to act on the information. And that feeds into your bizarre secular Jesus complex quite nicely, doesn't it?"

"That's what you really think of me?" Mulder asked quietly, still not able to look at her.

"It's certainly a conclusion supported by scientific analysis of the facts, and isn't that the basis on which you were planning to attack my faith?" Scully parried, huddling deeper into her soggy coat. She was chilled through despite the cranking heat that made breathing difficult.

"Your faith tells you that you deserve to suffer, Scully," Mulder replied. "I only do it because, like you said, there's nobody else. I don't think I deserve it. It's something I accept as part of reaching a desired goal."

"Don't tell me you don't think you deserve it, Mulder," Scully told him, giving him a patented "who do you think you're fooling" look. "You not only think it, you're the fucking poster child for guilt. You were told you deserved to suffer ever since Sam disappeared. You're a psychologist, instead of dissecting everybody else, why not turn a little of your profiling ability on yourself for once? Or are you afraid of what you'll find?"

"While you're dispensing psychological prescriptions Dr. Scully, why not try a little dose of that yourself," Mulder was angry now, she could hear it in the way he tried to control his voice but it cracked anyway. He still looked at the traffic and not at her. "I mean, can you be just a little more disconnected from your own feelings? Can you hide just a little deeper behind your "I'm fine" facade?

"You're not fine, Scully. The things you've experienced would break most normal people, it's ok for you to feel something. It's ok for you to be sad. It's ok for you to scream and cry and get angry and say "why me"? But you won't, because it's not saintly to feel things. If I'm Jesus, then you're trying to be fucking Job, while God, or the men that think they're God, stick it to you again because of some nasty little deal they've made with the Devil.

"Why do you think you have to be so goddamned strong all the time?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, trying not to shiver. He was trying to pry her apart like he did all of the sick people they hunted. It wouldn't do to show him she was weak in any way. Mulder always went for her weak spots. He thought it helped.

He didn't know how much it hurt instead.

"I'm talking about abduction. I'm talking about cancer. I'm talking about rape and Emily and torture and every other fucking thing they've done to you. And I'm talking about the fact that you've never said so much as a word. The only time I've seen you cry, it's always been about someone else, some way to displace your feelings onto a surrogate so you don't have to deal with the fact that they're your feelings about you."

"I know what you think, Mulder," she said. "But you have no evidence to base your conclusion on. So you haven't seen me cry. Does that mean that I haven't? Maybe it just means that I don't want you to see me."

"I know you, Scully," he said, gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles were white. He was sneaking little glances at her as he watched the road now. Looking for a weakness. "You never give in.

You were fucking dying and you never gave in. You were lying in that bed, slipping away every second, shrinking down to nothing and you just asked to take the fall for me. You're dying and you want to do something for me. Can't you see the displacement there?"

"Why is making my death mean something instead of nothing displacement?"

"How could your death ever, under any circumstances, mean nothing?"

"How arrogant to think anyone is that important, Mulder," she said.

"And a religion that tells you you're dogshit is better?" he asked.

"Scully, some people are that important. At least to other people. And until God comes down and reveals himself, other people are all any of us have. So I'm going to try to do something about the things that are real and let the metaphysical take care of itself. You're real. And even though you're no longer sick, I can still see you slipping away little by little. But this time you're doing it to yourself. Because you don't want to face the pain."

"So I'm a coward now?' Scully asked. "I thought I was a Saint."

"I never said it was cowardice," he told her. "You're just trying to turn it into something else, displace it, instead of deal with it. And it only ends up hurting you more and more, can't you see that? Why are you being this way?"

"I still don't know what you're talking about, Mulder," Scully told him, though she knew very well indeed. She just didn't want to deal with him and his messy emotions right now. Her nerves were shot. She just wanted to go somewhere alone and quiet and dark. To lie in the dark and rest. By herself. Fortunately, they'd just pulled into her street.

"Just talk to me, Scully," he pleaded.

"I don't have anything to say," she said. "And I'm not being any way. I am what I am. I'm being what I am. If you don't like it, then that's your problem, not mine. If you don't like it, then go find someone to be around that you do like. I'm going inside. It's been a long day and I'm tired."

"Don't do this, Scully,"

"What, don't go home?"

"Don't be like this, shut everyone out," he told her, looking at his hands locked on the steering wheel instead of at her. "If you won't talk to me, at least talk to your mother - or someone. All of this is bothering you, I know it. And if you don't trust me- There's got to be someone you do trust. Someone you'll let in."

Scully simply got out of the car. She didn't have the patience for Mulder's wounded feelings tonight.

"Goodnight Mulder, I'll see you Monday," she told him and deliberately turned her back and walked into her building.

She knew he hadn't left because she didn't hear the car pull away. But she willed herself not to care. She wished he'd just give up. Didn't he realize it was pointless? That she couldn't care the way he wanted her to.

He'd be better off now. Peggy was there. Scully could see they were really going to hit it off. He'd accused her of being to hard on Peggy first thing, hadn't he? Peggy would cure what ailed Mulder. What he kept looking at Scully to provide. Peggy was young and strong and beautiful. Just the thing to cure anyone of Scully-sickness. Of Scully-weakness. She had always been Mulder's weak link. Now someone bigger and stronger and more faithful, someone ready and able to do the task had appeared.

God really was trying to tell her something.

Scully couldn't not listen to God. No matter what she wanted.

But she could ignore Mulder. She could freeze him out. She could be cold, hardened to him and all his appeals.

She was in control.

But this is cooling  
(This is cooling  
Faster than I can  
(This is cooling)  
Faster than I can  


Scully made it inside the door of her apartment before she started to shake.

She made it into the bathtub before she started to cry.

And the water was colder than her body before she made it out again.

She stared at her unlovely tear-blotched face in the medicine cabinet mirror and thought about what it contained. Toothbrush, toothpaste, eye makeup remover, cotton balls, toner, moisturizer, Bactine, bandages, iodine, witch hazel, Neosporin, Ibuprophen, half a bottle of NyQuil left over from the last cold she'd had, three bottles of different kinds of sleeping pills, razor blades, and a scalpel she kept in case of emergencies. It was feeling more and more like an emergency now. And the bathwater was still drawn. It wouldn't even be messy. Just a sin. And she would go to hell forever and never see her father again.

Or else she'd just wake up tomorrow morning and have to go to work. Like usual. Because she was already in Hell.

What else could it be, that she'd become this dried-up, hateful, old, barren thing? That she'd gotten her sister killed, that she'd gotten her daughter created and killed, that she'd alienated and treated like dirt the one person who still felt something for her in the world - Mulder. And that she couldn't really care about it at all anymore.

That she couldn't care about anything at all.

Because the one way she'd thought herself still useful, still benefiting those around her, she was even inadequate at that. Peggy was better. Peggy saw what she did not because of her openness and warmth. Peggy should be doing it. Scully was redundant.

And removing redundancy saved everyone in the end, didn't it?

God had already tried to remove her once. God or someone. It didn't matter. She should have died already. She shouldn't be there. Maybe that was what God was really trying to tell her.

By bringing Peggy.

And of course she wouldn't kill herself. No matter how much she might feel like it. She couldn't do that to her mother. To Mulder. To Skinner. To all the people who imagined she meant something to them. But she could remove herself from their lives. From the X-Files. From the FBI. And she would.

But she wouldn't do it tonight, not until she tied up a few loose ends. Dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's. She had to make certain things were taken care of. That Mulder was taken care of. She had to be certain Peggy was ready to step in and take her place there as well. Because she knew he would blame himself, and it would hurt him, because he didn't really understand her and thought she was something else.

She'd write him another letter. Like she had when she was sick. So that he would have something to look at after she was gone to know that he was not guilty. Not even a little.

S

cully shut the medicine cabinet and went out into the living room to her desk to find paper and a pen. It seemed too impersonal to write something like that on the computer, even though she knew she'd go through several revisions before she had it the way she'd want it.

The way she'd want him to have it.

Scully sat down at her desk and began to write.

But do I hate what she is?  
Or do I want to be her?  
And don't we love something fresh  
Anything new  
Virgin  


Scully was just beginning the fourth page of her letter when she heard a key turning in the lock on the front door. The silver metal desk clock a friend had given her from Crate & Barrel read 1:07 a.m. There was only one person it could be.

She quickly covered up what she was writing with a blank sheet of paper.

"What are you doing here, Mulder?" she asked, when she heard him enter the room.

"What are you doing still up?" he asked. As if he had a right to. As if he belonged there, and could ask her questions in her own living room. "I was driving by and I saw you there with the light on, through the window."

"What are you doing in Georgetown at this time of night, Mulder?" she asked, walking threateningly toward him in her doorway. At least as threatening as a five foot two woman wearing nothing but a bathrobe could be at one o'clock on a Saturday morning.

"You know," he said, closing the door behind him and locking it.

"I am getting really sick of this messed-up stalker crap, Mulder," she said, placing her hands on her hips and blocking his further entrance into her home. "Why can't you just leave me alone?"

"What was all that about today?" he countered with a question of his own. An accusation just like hers.

"What do you mean?"

"What you said about how I feel about your faith," he said.

"That's what you think," she said stubbornly. "Did you really come here right now to talk to me about religion, Mulder? Not about something else?"

"What else?"

"Why don't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"I asked you first."

"No you didn't."

"And my dad can beat up your dad," Scully told him, walking past him to the door to unlock it again. "This is pointless, Mulder. Just go home. I'll see you on Monday."

"Not until you tell me what's going on," he said, folding his arms across his chest.

"Tell you what?" Scully said. "There's nothing going on, Mulder. Just like usual. Everything's the same as it always has been. You're the one who's acting weird."

"What do you mean?"

"You've been moping non-stop for the past two months. And you keep staring at me. It's giving me the willies. Why don't you stop? Or don't you know how? Is that it, Mulder, you just don't know how to stop doing something once you start?" she said angrily, far past her breaking point already. Even before he'd arrived at her door. She didn't need his crap right now. "Please go and look up "obsessive-compulsive" in your little psychology books and read them again. And get yourself some fucking help. For my sake if not your own."

"Why are you so angry, Scully?" Mulder asked quietly.

"I think I just told you why," she said.

"No, you merely accused me of being insane for the second time since I walked in the door," Mulder said, taking hold of her arms above the elbow and physically moving her so that she had to look at him.

Scully didn't want to look at him. It was making her very angry indeed. And she could smell that he'd had a few, probably with Frohike while they watched the latest surgery-enhanced bimbettes romp across the Gunmen's big-screen TV.

"And whenever you're losing an argument you always rely on physical size to try to intimidate me. Well, it doesn't work, Mulder, I'm not intimidated. Now why don't you just go home before I say something you'll regret," Scully told him, vainly trying to pull herself out of his grasp, but only succeeding in pulling her bathrobe out of whack, parting it far more revealingly than she was at all comfortable with.

"No fair trying to distract me," Mulder leered in Pavlovian reaction to naked female flesh in his general vicinity. "Answer my question. Why are you so angry? I haven't done anything to you, and yet you tore me a new asshole twice in front of your new assistant and did much worse in the car today. I've been thinking about that a lot and that's not like you St. Scully. What's up?"

"Let go of me, Mulder," Scully said, planting her feet firmly in the carpet and leaning her whole weight back away from him. "It's not like anything I said could have changed O'Connor's worshipful opinion of either of us. Someone has obviously filled her head with a huge load of nonsense, and she's determined to believe it regardless of the truth.

"Now would you let go?"

"That's not what this is about, so stop trying to change the subject," Mulder told her, using his grip on her arms to draw her closer to him. Perhaps he thought he was distracting her, but it was only making her angrier.

"You are touching me inappropriately, Agent Mulder," Scully said, stopping her futile struggles and drawing herself up to her full five-two, and glaring up into his face with a look that should have struck him dead on the spot. Should have, that was if Mulder was a normal person instead of a notoriously perverse freak who never reacted like a normal person would.

Mulder smiled down into her angry face.

"You're absolutely right, Agent Scully," Mulder told her, continuing to smile, "I am touching you very inappropriately. Let's see what we can do about that, hmm?"

Woman you got too many brambles  
Hiding under these bushes  
Woman you got too many brambles  
But I always liked a good storm  
Always good for a storm

Scully knew him. She knew to expect something tricky. She just forgot how very much bigger and very much stronger he was.

Keeping his grip on her arms, Mulder simply backed Scully up against the wall of the hallway that ran between the living room and the kitchen and essentially pinned her against it with his body. This allowed him to wrap his left arm tightly around her while using his right hand to part her bathrobe the rest of the way to gain access to the naked flesh beneath. Any protest she thought to make was quickly smothered by his mouth on hers, and any struggle was quickly forestalled by one horrific fact.

Scully wanted him desperately.

It was something she'd understood about herself for some time. While she hated Mulder sometimes, there was never, ever a time when she didn't lust for him. When she didn't want to touch his muscled body or feel his hardness against her, taste his mouth or feel the scrape of the beard he so desperately combated against her cheek.

From the first moment she saw him, sitting at his desk in the basement office, wearing the glasses that made him look so bookish and intelligent and being a total smart-ass, she'd wanted him. Every touch of his hand gave her a serious thrill, and her fantasies had been empty of anyone but him for more years now than she liked to admit.

She longed to feel his mouth on her.

She could not get enough of touching him. And she was pathetic enough to take whatever he wanted to give her. Especially since she wouldn't be around for much longer, and most likely after tonight, he would no longer be interested in giving anything to her, even if she was.

Unfortunately Mulder was wearing an awful lot of clothes. He'd gone home and changed since work. He now wore jeans, a turtleneck and his leather jacket, but getting them off him while pinned up against the wall was going to be a trick and a half. Especially as she was honor or at least pride-bound to put up some kind of resistance.

Scully struggled slightly and pushed away at Mulder's waist, but that was very close to the part of him that he most wanted against her, and she didn't get very far with it. But her hands were flat against the taut muscles of his abdomen, and she suppressed a little shudder of excitement as she felt him growl with desire both under her lips and her hands.

She was incredibly weak when it came down to it. She could feel herself getting wet and he was barely touching her really, just running his hands over the skin of her back and sides as he held her hard against him. Scully knew she could have been happy if that was all he did forever, but Mulder apparently had other ideas.

Keeping his left arm around her to lock her in place, he put his right between them and began removing his belt. It was a rather difficult task, and Scully almost laughed as she felt him fumbling between their bodies. It irritated him and he roughly pulled his mouth from hers.

"Something funny?" he asked, continuing to work at the belt.

Scully took the opportunity to give him a good shove. He remained where he was. He'd been expecting it, she could tell by the way his eyes darkened at the challenge.

"Why don't you go home, Mulder," she said, in a remarkably even voice considering how impatient she was for him to get out of his jeans.

Mulder gave her a shove back into the wall with his chest and used both hands to get the belt and his jeans undone and down more quickly than she would have thought possible if she hadn't seen it for herself.

"You really want that, Scully?" he asked, looking her right in the eye. "It doesn't look that way to me."

"You never have been very good at knowing what I want, Mulder," Scully told him.

"I think I've figured it out this time," he told her, and then he moved quickly again, reaching down and taking a firm grip beneath her thighs, pulling her upward along the wall as she clutched at him to prevent herself from falling. She was going to say something smart, she was sure of it, but he stopped her with his mouth and, of course, with his cock plunging deep into her welcoming body.

She almost came then. She had to keep a firm grip on herself to prevent it. It would not do to have him know that. To let him know what he did to her, what he meant.

She thought of everything disgusting that she could. She thought of Flukeman, Cigarette Man, the Peacock Family, rotting carcasses bloating in the summer sun, the black emptiness of her soul - but nothing worked. It all came back to him, to Mulder. He'd been with her through it all, even if he hadn't realized what it was. Even though he wanted to believe in things, he missed so much of what really was happening. He missed her shriveling soul, just as he had missed for years the way she really felt for him, the way she needed him while hating herself every minute she did so.

She was his burden. A weight on him, as real as the weight she now was in his arms as he thrust himself inside her and her against the wall. His dead albatross, hanging from around his neck like the Ancient Mariner. The still-living symbol of his guilt, of loss, of the quest.

She couldn't be that.

She'd spent her life refusing to be that. To need him, or anyone.

She wouldn't. She refused to need him.

"Scully," he moaned her name into her mouth. He was close. She could tell, she could feel it in the tension in him, in the way his thrusts had become more uncoordinated and uncontrolled.

"Now, Mulder, it's all right," she said after pulling her mouth from his. She kissed his forehead and temples instead, while he buried his face in her neck and shuddered.

"No, you too," was all he could manage. But she knew what he wanted. He wanted for her to lose control, as he was about to. She wanted to. She wanted to go along with him, as she had so often before on simpler occasions, but she couldn't afford it now. She couldn't let him win this one. Because if he won in this, they both lost because she would be too weak to stop herself from needing him, from feeling what she couldn't afford to feel.

But in her moment of noble sacrifice, in her relinquishment of desire, in her striving to be good, Scully forgot one fundamental thing.

Mulder was tricky.

With a surprisingly slight adjustment to his stance and the position of his right arm, Mulder got his hand between them. And that was all it took to utterly destroy all of her resolve.

Scully came so hard she actually banged the back of her head against the wall, trying to throw it back and forgetting that the hard surface behind her had some meaning. She came so hard, she didn't even mind the fact that her head was severely jarred from the impact. She came so hard that she was afraid she was going to pass out before she could feel Mulder finish, but she didn't. But she kept coming even after he was done, bringing an entirely too prideful smile to his lips for her liking.

Because when she was finished herself, she remembered how much she didn't like him right then. And how much she really did want him to leave.

So then love walked up to like  
And said 'I know that you don't like me much  
Let's go for a ride."

"Are you going to put me down?" she asked finally, looking at him coolly.

"Maybe someday," Mulder continued to smile that smile. He looked

entirely too happy to suit her.

Scully just gave him one of her looks. She didn't have to see it to know the one it was. It was the "Mulder-you-are-so-full-of-shit" look. It wasn't very effective, because while he did put her down, he only did it long enough to hitch up his pants so he could walk. Then, without even bothering to do them up, he picked her up again and carried her to the bedroom.

"Do you have some idea of staying?" she asked icily as he lay her down gently on the turned down sheets. She was rather glad she'd done that before going into the bathtub or she'd undoubtedly have had to wash her duvet cover after the night was over and that was a pain.

"At least until I get what I want," he said, as he removed his jacket and dumped it on the chair by the door.

"Which is?"

"My explanation," Mulder continued, peeling off the turtleneck to reveal his incredible and incredibly distracting body.

"I don't have to answer to you," Scully told him, folding her arms across her chest again, even though she was lying down, her open bathrobe only serving to enhance the nakedness of the rest of her.

"No, you don't," he said, kicking off his shoes and then going to work on the jeans and socks. "I'm just hoping that you'll eventually want to tell me what's bothering you."

"Oh, and you think you can fuck me into submission, is that it?" Scully asked belligerently.

"Not really," the now-naked Mulder replied as he sat down on the edge of the bed and grinned his lopsided grin, the one that always served to melt her heart into little puddles and get him what he wanted, whether it was a midnight autopsy or, apparently, sex. "But you can't blame a guy for trying."

Scully did not smile. She wanted to, but she did not.

"All I really want," Mulder said, serious now. "Is for you to trust me. Just a little. Like you would a friend, Scully. That's all I'm asking."

"I don't fool around with my friends, and people who I do fool around with are immediately suspect," Scully replied.

"Why's that?" Mulder asked, looking genuinely surprised.

Scully was angry with herself for revealing more of her soul than she should have, but it was too late now. She knew he'd pick and pick until he got it out of her somehow, and maybe this confession would indeed serve to distract him from the one he wanted to hear. The one he'd come for.

"There's a reason I'm not with anyone, Mulder," she said, thinking of her college boyfriends and their cheating and Jack and his abuse.

"And it has nothing to do with you or the X-Files. And this is something I think you know as well as I do. People you sleep with are just waiting to betray you. Maybe only in small ways, but that's what happens. Resentments build up and the sex doesn't really smooth them over, it just makes them harder to face, because you've got more on the line, more to jeopardize."

"What makes you think they're waiting to betray you?" he asked, very much sobered by her observation. He'd had enough betrayal in the relationship department himself, she knew.

"Because it's what they always do," she replied. "Either by sins of commission or omission."

"And what sins have I committed, Scully?" he asked, his eyes open to her, ready to be hurt.

"This isn't about you, Mulder," Scully said, sitting up and placing a hand on his shoulder. "It's about me. Sometimes things can be about me, you know."

She was surprised to find that he was fighting back tears.

"I know that," he said, his voice husky with pain. He drew her into his arms so she could no longer see his eyes. "Don't you know that everything's about you? Don't you know everything's been about you for years now?"

It was the second occasion on which she'd had sex with her partner. And the second time he'd gotten all sentimental afterward. She would have to make a note that a post-coital Mulder was an emotionally fragile one, and lighten up on him a little. Because afterward she was just the same as she always was.

It was part of being stable, she supposed. You were the same no matter what. No matter how abject and soulless. No matter how cold and evil. You were the same no matter what you endured. No matter what happened to you. You could deal with it. You were fine. You barely felt anything at all.

But she could feel him in her arms, and she held on tight. Because he needed it. He needed to know that it was ok. That everything would be ok. That she wouldn't let anything damage him any more than was strictly necessary. That was her responsibility. As the emotionally stable one.

Scully buried her face in the smooth skin over his shoulder. The shoulder she'd shot, trying to prevent him from killing Krycek and destroying his life. She rubbed her cheek against the shiny white star that marked the bullet scar. They certainly had marked one another over the years of their partnership, but not all the wounds were nearly so visible as that one.

Except maybe her tattoo.

Mulder was kissing her forehead, and then the bridge of her nose, and then he gently raised her head up so her lips could meet his. In perfection.

Scully had always imagined that Mulder would be a good kisser. You didn't have lips like that, or an oral fixation like he did and not be good. But it wasn't merely physical skill, it went beyond that.

Scully remembered reading Robert A. Heinlein's "Stranger In A Strange Land" when she was thirteen. She probably hadn't gotten everything she could have out of it if she'd read it as an adult, but she did remember one part where he described one of the reasons Valentine was so special. It was the way he kissed people.

With his full attention.

Mulder's kisses were like that.

It was like everything in the universe had been compressed down to one perfect moment of time. Where nothing else mattered but his lips on hers, his tongue in her mouth, his body pressing against her. Them joined.

She wished everything could be like that. So clear. So perfect.

She wished she could be so perfect.

She would miss that perfection so much when she was gone.

But if she stayed she'd miss it anyway.

Because he'd leave her. She couldn't hold attention like that for long. Once the mystery was passed, once he thought he really knew her, then it would be over. And she would die. Better to die now, before she'd become accustomed to perfection. Before she really knew what she'd be missing.

And technically what they were doing was a sin, anyway - fornication.

It made Scully consider the absurdity of religion. Religion as opposed to God. God wouldn't have created this perfection if he hadn't meant for it to be appreciated, to be recognized, to be felt. He wouldn't have created Mulder. He wouldn't have created her.

She wondered what God wanted Mulder to learn from her. She knew what she was learning. Love. And sacrifice. And the necessity of both.

And right now, in the perfection of his kisses, she could admit it.

Even if she could only admit it now.

Only now.

She let him lay her back on the sheets.

Now she could admit it. And him.

This ocean's round and round that pineapple tree  
And is your place in heaven  
Worth giving up  
These kisses, these, yes, these kisses

Scully woke up the next morning alone.

She tried not to be devastated.

So there it was already. She had been prepared for it, of course.

She'd known he'd tire of her. But two nights was the shortest sexual relationship she'd ever had. But then, she wasn't what she had been. And though her body was in decent shape for a woman of her age, her soul was blighted. And it was showing through somehow. It was what he'd seen. She knew it. It was the reason he'd gone so soon.

Because there was someone nearby who did still have a soul. A great soul. Greater than hers had ever been, and the skills and enthusiasm that did, indeed, match the ones she'd joined the X-Files with. Of course Mulder recognized that. Of course he could make the comparison, just as she did. She hadn't worked with him this long to underestimate him in that respect.

She wondered if he'd gone straight to Peggy from her own bed. It would be fitting if he did. She was what he really needed - a woman with a great soul to match his own, not the last dregs of whatever Scully was as a person. He must have felt the emptiness within her last night. He must have finally recognized her coolness for what it really was, nothingness. Lack of feeling. Darkness.

Scully didn't want to get up, but she knew she ought to. She had things to take care of. Things to prepare, so she could leave with a clear conscience. There were papers to get in order, decisions to be made, final visits to be taken. She wanted to go to the graveyard to see her father and Melissa.

She hadn't really thought of where she'd go. It didn't matter.

Somewhere they needed doctors, she supposed. Maybe somewhere dangerous. Then if she died it would have been for a good cause. And she'd be done.

But she wondered where she'd end up. Heaven, or Hell? She wouldn't technically have done anything wrong. But she did want to die. And thinking was the same as doing wasn't it? But who was counting? Maybe only God. And Scully was caring about God less and less, despite the fact that she'd gone back to church.

Suicide was a mortal sin. The ultimate selfishness and it made you go to Hell, maybe even if you got killed on purpose but didn't do the killing yourself. But Scully could do Hell. She'd done it already. Her father's death, her abduction, Melissa's death, serial killers, cancer, sterility, the loss of her only chance at ever having a child, her inability to love Mulder as she ought to, as he deserved, she understood what Hell was, all right. And Mulder had been wrong in comparing her to Job. She wasn't Job, she was Lucifer. She'd been jerked around enough. And she was mad at God. Mad enough to let him burn her forever and laugh in his face while she did so. Scully finally understood how Lucifer had felt as he'd been cast into the pit \- defiant because God had royally screwed him over and justified, too, because God was not playing fair

God didn't care about her. He'd proven that. He was punishing her for something, and she didn't know what. So fuck God. It was time to exercise a little of that Free Will she'd heard so much about.

And her will was that it end. That she stop hurting herself and the few people who still loved her by her continued presence, like a blight in their lives. She could no longer stand to watch them watching her, waiting for her to be abducted, to become ill again, to struggle to not to burst into tears whenever she saw a woman with a baby or a little red-haired girl playing in the park. She had to get away, out of their sight, somewhere where she was not known and where her wizened soul wouldn't be a scourge to anyone. She would make that sacrifice, but she would do it of her own choosing, not because she was told to do so by anyone.

Scully would no longer be anyone's pawn. She refused to be manipulated.

She was done with all that.

Scully heard a crashing sound from her living room. It sounded a lot like the chair of her desk knocking over the metal wastebasket. 

She sat up and fumbled on the nightstand for her gun.

It wasn't there.

Scully panicked. What was it? Some lunatic they'd investigated? Another serial killer? An assassin like the one that had murdered Melissa? Another abduction?

Then Scully relaxed, lay back down and looked at her bedroom door. What did it matter? If it was any of those things, it simply took care of everything for her. She wouldn't even have to lift a finger. Maybe God was relenting slightly and sending someone to get rid of her, so her blight could be wiped from the earth by him instead of by her own hand. She fleetingly wondered what afterlife you got if God killed you himself because even he couldn't stand you?

Heavy footsteps were approaching down the hall. Scully calmly regarded the door. 

Mulder stood framed in the doorway with a look so horrible on his face that Scully would be hard pressed to describe it adequately. He was holding several crumpled pieces of notebook paper filled with writing in his hand.

"Did you write this?" he asked.

"It's my handwriting," Scully said. "So I must have written it."

"You're- you're quitting the Bureau. You're leaving the X-Files. You're-Leaving," Mulder slumped against the doorframe and stared blankly at the pages in his hands.

"You weren't supposed to see that," Scully told him.

"It's addressed to me," he said, his voice hollow.

"Yes, but you weren't supposed to see it until I was gone," she said calmly. "But I suppose everything will be easier now that you know. I can quit the Bureau without causing problems for you or the X-Files. All you have to do is add your recommendation to mine. We can say that it's for health reasons."

"Health reasons," Mulder parroted dully, still looking at his hands where they gripped the paper. Scully could see that his knuckles were white.

"I know you don't understand this, Mulder," she said. "But I have my reasons. And they're good ones if you'd care to hear them."

"You accused me, that night-" Mulder's voice broke, he still didn't look at her. "That night two months ago, of having already made up my mind. Of having already decided what it was going to be, what we were going to be, before I let you have your say. That's just what you're doing now. You didn't ask me, Scully. You told me. You fucking told me what it was going to be. And you're wrong. And now you want me to go along with you being wrong.

"Well I won't."

Mulder looked at her then, and Scully almost cringed under the look of pain and a kind of naked hatred written in his glance, as if every kind thing, every warm thing they'd ever felt for one another had suddenly ignited all at once, and turned into a supernova that was going to burn them both and leave nothing but dull, cold ash in its wake. But, of course, Scully was already ash. She was already cold.

She could feel for Mulder and his pain, but only in a detached sort of way. It didn't touch her anymore. It couldn't. She couldn't let herself be open to it, to him. Not if she was going to do what she should, what she must. Not if she was going to make the sacrifice for his happiness.

He couldn't see it now, of course. But he'd be happier without her. There would be someone there, someone better to ease his pain and give him the solace and the true understanding that she was incapable of - Peggy. Scully would make sure she put in her suggestion of having Peggy as her replacement on the X-Files. She thought she could get Skinner to go along with it.

And it would make her feel better about Mulder. He'd be in such good hands. Better hands than hers. Hands strong enough to help him, not to hold him back.

"I'm not wrong, Mulder," Scully told him. "You just can't see it. You just won't. And it's for a good reason, too. I know it. I know you. You're loyal. You think that after all I've been through you owe me something. Well you don't, Mulder. You don't.

"All I've been doing all this time is holding you back," Scully said. "Holding you back with my weakness, with my scientific prejudices, with being the lever they use to move you the way they want. I'm tired of being manipulated, Mulder. And I'm tired of being used to manipulate you.

"I'm going to stop it and I'm going to stop it now. Before things get worse. Before they do God knows what."

"We can't see each other any more, Mulder," she finished.

She saw him twitch before he moved. His head twitched like the tail of the jaguar just before it leaps down from the trees on some unsuspecting deer. And then in a mad rush, he was on the bed, on her, gripping her upper arms fiercely and shaking her until her teeth rattled.

"What. The fuck. Is Wrong. With You. Scully," he hissed out as he shook her, her head wobbling loosely, flying backward dangerously close to the headboard of her bed, and it was still sore from where she'd struck it against the wall the night before.

"Don't you know that that's what they want? To break us up? To separate us?" Mulder shook and spoke with equal frenzy until Scully felt dizzy. "Hasn't that been what it's been about for years now? Every time we get close. Every time we find something they don't want us to find. Every time we might be just this close to being happy, or maybe even having a good day, something like this comes up. I just was never expecting it to come from you. Can't you see that you're playing right into their hands?"

Mulder let go of her abruptly, sending her backward into the pillows.

She was too weak and dizzy to catch herself on her elbows.

Mulder was on top of her, straddling her thighs, looming over her, his hands on either side of her shoulders on the mattress. 

But she met his frenzied gaze and only breathed a little hard to calm herself before she spoke.

But Mulder wasn't done.

"Or is it me, Scully?" he continued, not touching her, but leaning closer, his many-colored eyes boring into her blue ones. What did he see with those shifting eyes? What did he know?

"You said I was a vampire. An emotional vampire. I know you meant it. You never say anything you don't mean," his voice was softer, almost caressing now, as he said back the words she knew had most hurt him that night two months before. He probably chanted them at night, to put himself to sleep. The Mulder equivalent of counting sheep. Counting all the hurts, cataloging the pain, categorizing and clarifying them one by one, like rosary beads, slipping blackly through his fingers. Oh, Mulder liked his pain, that was certain. And still he accused her of derailing "their" happiness, as if there was happiness to be derailed. As if there was a "them".

"Are you afraid I'm going to consume you? Is it me you don't want to win?"

"You already have," Scully said, her voice coming out much more tentatively and shakily than she would have liked. Because she was sure. She was sure of that at least. Mulder had gotten what he'd wanted. Her. In bed. Of her own free will and more than once. He could now gloat with a free conscience. Proof of her weakness, her need, when she should have been bigger than that. When she should have been good and selfless and everything they all pretended she was.

"How?" he asked. "'Cause I sure don't feel like I'm winning, Scully. It sure feels like losing from this end."

"And what are you losing, Mulder? What could you possibly be losing? This?" Scully indicated her rather pathetic, flat-chested, skinny body. "So what? It's easily replaceable. Just spend a few less nights with Frohike and your tapes and go out a little. I know half a dozen women down at the Bureau who would be delighted to be in my position right now."

"So you're saying I can do better?" Mulder said.

"That's exactly what I'm saying, Mulder," she continued. "It all comes back to the same things. The same things that made it so impossible for me to go out with Rob. You know about them already, but that doesn't mean you're not getting shortchanged every time you touch me. Sex can be had, Mulder. Everybody's out there looking for it. Why waste your time looking here? You know what's here."

"You're right, I do," he said, bending down to kiss her passionately. Scully allowed it, but didn't return it. She didn't know why he thought it would work even as she could feel herself arching up toward him. When Mulder's attention drifted lower, Scully continued, as if she hadn't been interrupted. Trying to ignore the touches of his mouth, and, oh, God, his hands, on her naked flesh.

"Why is it that you always think this is going to change things?" she asked. As if making love four or five times was an always.

"Because," he said, sitting up to remove his turtleneck and unbutton his jeans. "One of these days you're going to get it. One of these days we're going to do it right, so that you understand what this is. And things will change, Scully. But not the way you think."

"Sure, Mulder," Scully said, as she watched him get out of his jeans and boxers. "Fine. Whatever."

And Peggy got a message for me  
From Jesus  
And I've heard every word  
That you have said.  
And I know I have been  
Driven like the snow

Mulder joined her under the covers, and her further skepticism was drowned in the feel of him against her. The planes of bone and muscle as they played against her body. The way they fit together, as if they'd been created just for this.

It made her think of what Peggy had said in the autopsy bay, about the salt and pepper shakers. Different but matching. It felt like that. It felt just like that when he touched her. That only together were they complete, a set. But Scully knew it was a lie, because she could be matched with no one. She was empty, flawed. Cold. Even with his warmth, his life, his truth, inside her.

She couldn't be touched.

Her soul was frozen, even as she knew it belonged to him.

But this is cooling  
(This is cooling)  
Faster than I can  
(This is cooling)  
Faster than I can  
Hey this is cooling  
This is cooling


End file.
